Is Your Web Site Content Blockbuster?
How You Can Learn From Summer Blockbuster Movies
Heading into the prime time of movie season (May starts the Summer Blockbuster movie season), there’s a lesson to be learned when developing your website’s content and preparing it to be search engine optimized. It’s so important to have solid, fresh and interesting content for long term success. Many summer blockbusters, like websites, can have an abundance of “Flash”, poor structure, irrelevant information, or just be something we’ve seen a million times.
A movie can sometimes still make a lot of money having these flaws, but this doesn’t mean it’s good for the franchise or the studio in the long run. If this happens to movies, it hurts possibilities for sequels, merchandise opportunities and the stars reputations, which all in all is bad for long term business. A great example of content that was built up through multiple movies is proven by the success of Marvel’s The Avengers. Each movie leading up to it (there were 5), was successful in creating solid content to build on, and it’s definitely paying dividends now. The main point is that for successful long-term business, websites and movies both need GOOD content, it has to be blockbuster.
J.J. Abrams' Star Trek used realistic and relatable ways to tell us who Kirk and his crew are.
There are many variables that should be considered in the process of content management. There has to be meaning in the content, substance, depth, something the reader can relate to. In the recent blockbuster Star Trek from 2009, the classic characters are developed throughout the plot creating depth to what is already known about them. We learn why many of them are the characters we have grown to love from the 60’s, and the reasons are realistic and relatable. In this clip, we find out why Captain Kirk’s best friend Dr. McCoy has the nickname Bones, and everyone can understand and possibly relate. Website content should also be realistic and relevant, not irrelevant randomness. Connections need to be made. It should be easy to see why people would care about your content. A website that does a great job of this is gizmodo.com. They provide a variety of relatable content about technology, entertainment, and current events.
The Dark Knight Movies have legendary structure for their content.
The content should also be presented within a good structure, whether on a website or in a movie. It shouldn’t be too complicated, nor too simple. If the structure is too complicated the audience loses interest and will disengage, if it’s too simple the audience can perceive it as poor quality and discredit it. If you’re trying to provide intriguing and engaging content, just look at 2008’s The Dark Knight. It’s a superhero movie about a man dressed like a bat, but they present the most believable and realistic world a man dressed like a bat has ever lived in. This has deemed Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies (which will be concluded with July 20th’s The Dark Knight Rises) as the benchmark that all superhero movies should strive to be. Your website structure needs to be the right stage for your content, just like the realistic world they created for Batman. All the Adobe Flash, awesome menus and bright colors might get you on the screen, but if your content isn’t blockbuster you won’t see a large portion of the audience returning. Check out ign.com, where they cover all types of media, but it’s organized, easy to read, and appealing.
Wall-E and Eve are relatable characters that deal with current concerns
Finally your content needs to be fresh and relevant. Yes we like your characters, yes the structure presents the content in a readable and enjoyable fashion, but is it current? Content on a website, especially now with social media needs to be current. To really increase traffic and social shares, people have to want to share it, they have to like it, and itneeds to mean something to them. If the content is current, the chances they will like it and want to share it are exponentially better. With summer blockbusters, we like to be taken out of our world and put into someone else’s for the entertainment value, but we can’t achieve this if the characters don’t have some relatable human qualities we see in ourselves today. Look how easy it was to relate and fall in love with Wall-E and Eve in Disney’s robot story Wall-E. It’s easiest for us to relate to characters when they are faced with similar situations that we face every day here in 2012, and in Wall-E the story involves the very current subjects of obesity and environmentalism. Mashable.com is a great site that constantly displays current content, they pull from the top stories of the world in business, entertainment, and technology, and utilize social media in providing their content.
Can the audience relate to your content? Is it presented in an easily accessible and appealing structure? Is the message of your content current and relevant to the audience? These are the primary questions in movies and websites alike, which ultimately leads to; will they share with their friends and return for more of your blockbuster content?
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